Conservative Senate leader calls for 'greater transparency' in order to 'regain the public’s trust'

Senate leader calls for 'greater transparency' in order to 'regain the public’s trust'

Senators should disclose their expenses just as cabinet ministers do, the top Conservative in the Senate says, meaning the details of every trip and every receipt could be made public.

The comments from Sen. Marjory LeBreton came as the Conservatives began their push in the Senate to tighten spending rules on travel and housing allowances. Approval of the changes is unlikely to occur until next week at the earliest with the Liberals accusing the government of bulldozing through its reforms.

The Liberal leader in the Senate, meanwhile, asked LeBreton to support a request that the Senate’s internal economy committee hold public meetings on a review of Sen. Mike Duffy’s spending, to allay concerns about allegations that the same committee had sanitized Duffy’s original audit.

“It’s not as good as going to the RCMP … but if it’s going to go back to the committee, then I think we have to change the process,” said Sen. James Cowan.

“Let’s open the process up, let’s give everybody an opportunity to be heard and we can see who says what when, then we’ll know.”

LeBreton said the committee will make its own decision.

LeBreton was on the hot seat Wednesday, as she continued to face allegations that a $90,000 payment to Duffy from the prime minister’s former chief of staff had come with a promise to whitewash the final report of Duffy’s living expenses.

In a prepared statement, Duffy said he planned to co-operate fully with the committee reviewing his expenses “and with all other authorities.

“Canadians deserve to know all of the facts,” Duffy’s statement said. “I am confident that when they do, they will conclude as (auditors) Deloitte has already concluded, that my actions regarding expenses do not merit criticism.”

The internal economy committee, which reviewed Duffy’s original audit, removed key paragraphs from its final report that concluded Duffy’s travel patterns showed he spent more of his time in Ottawa, with summers in Cavendish, P.E.I. Duffy had said previously that he rents a home in Charlottetown during the winters.

The Conservative majority on the committee pushed through the changes to the audit report.

Liberal senators only voiced concerns when the report was made public. At that time, the deputy chairman of the committee, Liberal Sen. George Furey, said the vote on Duffy’s report was split along party lines.

“The reason we know that the internal economy committee whitewashed (Duffy’s report) is because we have Sen. George Furey who came forward immediately and said this is unacceptable, this is not something we’re going to play along with,” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau told reporters Wednesday.

LeBreton, like the prime minister, repeated she was never aware of a $90,000 payment by Harper’s then chief of staff Nigel Wright to Duffy to defray his housing expenses. On her way into the Senate chamber Wednesday, she pointedly told journalists: “There was no whitewash.”

You cannot reform something that contains people who have never been elected

“We must move to a system that discloses travel expenses in a manner consistent with that followed by cabinet ministers. And, with respect to office expenses, we must provide reports that are detailed as those provided by the House of Commons.”

Meanwhile, the NDP has launched a “roll-up-the-red-carpet” online petition and campaign to abolish the Senate.

“The Senate cannot be reformed,” said NDP leader Tom Mulcair. “You cannot reform something that contains people who have never been elected, who don’t understand the very principles of our democracy and are behaving as the ones we’ve just seen in the past week.”

The new website argues the Senate costs $92.5 million a year — the annual taxes of more than 8,000 average families — and that the average senator worked just 71 days last year.

It slams the Harper government for failing to come through on its promised Senate reforms and for going back on his word not to appoint senators.